A Boy and His Blog

Owen is now 31 months, and oh man is there a lot to write about!  Let me just try to whip through a few of these things.

1.  He is talking talking talking talking!  None stop talking.  He lost his signs and sounds for words and he says everything that he used to use a sign or sound for.  It is truly amazing and I am now thinking that it is a result of the combination of the fish oil, and his conversation that he had with me about his birth, which was kind of a breakthrough for him.

2.  He is obsessed with the heat!  Yes, the heat that comes from the furnace and blows through our vents.  Every day he says to Daddy “talk bout heat” and Daddy has to go show him the furnace and the heat ducts and the vents and explain how the heat works and where it goes and where it comes out.  Owen knows more about heating and ventilation now than your average adult.  He even wants to watch movies on YouTube and look at illustrations in books about it.

3.  Along with talking “bout” heat he also wants to “talk bout pool pace” every single day.  Daddy and Owen go to the pool at the community center every Monday afternoon and Owen is loving it.  He even just hung on to the edge and floated for awhile last time, and also hung onto Daddy’s hands and jumped up and down even letting his head go under water and everything!

4.  He is obsessed with going “round and round”, which means he runs in a circle around our living room, kitchen, and dining room area through two doorways.  Sometimes all three of us run “round and round” and it’s actually a pretty good workout.

5.  He is harassing the cats/ like crazy, every minute of the day.  I think it is due to the boredom that comes with being indoors most of the time.  He now calls them “Emmine and Hudders” for Emmaline and Fudders.

6.  We just changed Owen’s room around.  We took his crib out and will probably sell it or give it away as we never used it or liked it.  Since his bed is still in our room, his room is more of a playroom.  We brought up a large shelf with six square openings in it, his kitchen set, and his table and chairs along with most of his toys.  We stacked his toys on the shelf and put all his art supplies and toys that we don’t let him just have free access to on the top of the shelf.  His room is much more fun now and he seems to be enjoying this new arrangement, though he does miss hiding under his crib to poop

7.  We have one class left in ECFE.  We stopped going for weeks because Owen was so clingy and didn’t want to leave the house, but we finally went back two weeks ago.  Last time we went, Owen was okay and I separated with the other Mom’s, for the first time this semester!  And now we only have one class left.  I don’t think I’ll sign up for spring classes because it has been a huge hassle trying to get him to go and to let me separate, and I’m not sure when we will be moving, so we might as well just skip spring and start with summer once we move.

8.  He is very into helping lately and he will come up to me and ask “need help?”  It’s very cute.  We give him many jobs to do and he is more than willing to do them.

9.  Every night Owen wants to have popcorn and watch shows or listen to music.  So, he gets a bag of popcorn out of the cabinet, I open the popcorn bag, and he pulls his chair up, puts it in the microwave, pushes the popcorn button, then the “more” button because our popcorn button doesn’t go quite long enough, and then when it’s done he opens the door and tells me to take it out.  I then poor it into our vintage Pyrex bowls, the yellow, green and red ones, and we have our popcorn snack downstairs on the couch.  Sometimes Owen wants two bags of popcorn, and sometimes he tries to get us to start the microwave with the door open so he can watch the popcorn pop better.  Despite our frequent explanations that the microwave wont turn on with the door open, he still tries this every so often.

10.  Pretty much anytime Daddy and Mama do anything, Owen says, “Owen do it”.  He wants to do everything.  Everything.  He starts to panic and cry if he thinks that he wont be able to do it.

11.  After we got our Christmas tree up and decorated, I asked Owen if he liked it and he said, “yeah”.  Daddy said, “don’t you think our tree looks nice?”  And he said, “yeah”.  A few days later he was standing there looking at the tree and he said, “nice, Mama, nice tree”.  Every so often now he will pause and look at the tree and say, “nice”.

12.  He has set up several toy parades lately.  He makes long lines of toys, and adds things like cars, blocks, pull toys and necklaces.

13.   He is loving Elmo right now.  He didn’t know who Elmo was until Lyric started talking about him, and now Owen talks about Elmo all the time too.  He watches Elmo on YouTube with his Elmo doll and he calls Grover and Cookie Monster “blue Elmo”.

14.  The other day he went to Grammies and saw cousin Lucy and cousin Lyric.  Owen has now started to say Lyric instead of signing an “L”, and he also says Lucy.  He has been talking about Lucy a lot and every time I mention Lyric he asks about Lucy.  He wanted to know if Lucy would be at Christmas and if we could buy Lucy a Christmas present.  I didn’t know how to explain that one.

15.  He is starting to wean a bit.  Not that much, but I’ve noticed he doesn’t always need booba now if something doesn’t go his way, or if he is tired.  Sometimes he will let us cuddle him instead, and he will ask to drink milk instead of nurse.  He drinks chocolate soy milk and skim milk mixed together.  This was totally his idea.  He asked for milk in a box when we were at the store one day, and then picked out the soy milk, and he asked for it to be mixed with the other milk.  He says, “two milks” whenever I offer him milk.  He also is loving hot cocoa lately instead of tea.  Mama and Owen have cocoa now while Daddy has tea.

16.  I decided to eliminate naps.  Every now and then he still takes a nap, but most days he doesn’t.  This means he will go to bed by 9:00 pm.  If he naps, he wont go to bed until 11:00 pm, even if I wake him up after an hour.  So he gets less sleep if he naps because he sleeps for an hour nap, but then looses 2 hours before bed at night.  It also has helped Mama’s sanity a bit to not have to lay on the floor near Owen’s bed for an hour before he finally falls asleep.  He usually is out after our routine and about 10 – 20 minutes of singing to him and holding his hand while he lays in bed.

17.  He can count to 5 now by himself and he often does this on his own while playing.

18.  I bought a Go Fish game and Owen loves playing it.  He’s starting to get the whole concept of it, and it is very good for teaching counting, language, and turn taking skills.

19.  He is allowing us to read him his book about going potty on the potty chair, though he is still refusing to try it himself.  He gets his Joshua doll and we read the book about Joshua using the potty, but that is as far as he is taking it.

20.  When riding in the car, he says “home that way” and then points and he is usually right!  I mean we will be miles away from home, and he will suddenly point to home and know which direction it is in.  He points to it as a bird would fly, and not as we would drive too.

21.  When we watch a video with Owen or us in it or look in a mirror, he will say “two Owens”, “two Daddys”, or “two Mamas” to indicate that he is seeing a mirror image or video of one of us, which when added to the real one of us, makes two of course!

22.  The other day Daddy collected all of Owen’s semi-deflated balls and filled them with air.  Owen was fascinated by this and kept bringing me balls telling me they needed air.  He would bring me hard plastic balls, or solid rubber balls, and say they needed air.  A couple weeks later Daddy let Owen play with our old coin collection, and Owen set one coin aside.  Daddy said, “what is that coin for?”  And Owen said, “Dat need air”.  A few minutes later Daddy told Owen to clean up the coins because they were done with them.  After Owen put the coins away Daddy noticed a small pile of coins on the floor and asked Owen why he didn’t put those away.  Owen said, “dese need air”.

And that’s been our Owen for the last month.  I’ll try to update here more frequently so that these posts don’t have to be so long!